Note 333 — Chapter XXI

This is a random sample of Feltham’s style: “Of all objects of sorrow a distressed king is the most pitiful, because it presents us most the frailty of humanity, and cannot but most midnight the soul of him that is fallen. The sorrows of a deposed king are like the distorquements of a darted conscience which none can know but he that hath lost a crown.” Cent. i. 61. We find not long after the following precious phrase: “The nature that is arted with the subtleties of time and practice.” I. 63. In one page we have obnubilate, nested, parallel (as a verb), fails (failings) uncurtain, depraving (calumniating). I. 50. And we are to be disgusted with such vile English, or properly no English, for the sake of the sleepy saws of a trivial morality. Such defects are not compensated by the better and more striking thoughts we may occasionally light upon. In reading Feltham, nevertheless, I seemed to perceive some resemblance to the tone and way of thinking of the Turkish Spy, which is a great compliment to the former; for the Turkish Spy is neither disagreeable nor superficial. The resemblance must lie in a certain contemplative melancholy, rather serious than severe, in respect to the world and its ways; and as Feltham’s Resolves seem to have a charm, by the editions they have gone through, and the good name they have gained, I can only look for it in this.